


Timeline

by gwinne



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwinne/pseuds/gwinne
Summary: Set after "This Is Not Happening" (an attempt to make sense of the series odd timeline from seasons 7 and 8)





	Timeline

TIMELINE

A year ago Donnie Pfaster smashed her skull into a mirror.  
A year ago she wore a top hat and did magic tricks for  
Mulder. A year ago she spent the night in her partner's  
arms.

Scully finds herself doing this often, marking time not  
forward, according to the red circle in May on her  
calendar, but backward, against whatever curious thing she  
and Mulder did a year ago, in that marvelous year of  
firsts.

A year ago, after the paramedics checked her over; after  
Mulder slipped tennis shoes onto her splintered feet; after  
he wrapped her in an afghan and led her, like a sleepy,  
bleary-eyed child, into his car, he tucked her into his  
bed, changed into his own pajamas, and pulled her into his  
arms. Then he kissed her chastely on the lips. 

Neither of them spoke until morning.

The baby kicks as if to remind her, here I am, and Scully  
pulls herself out of the bath slowly, careful not to lose  
her balance. It is moments like these when she misses  
Mulder most, quiet moments at night or early morning that  
they had just begun sharing when he was abducted, moments  
they'd make love warm and drowsy from a shared bath. If he  
were here, Mulder would wrap her in a towel of the softest  
Egyptian cotton and put his hand against the upper curve of  
her uterus where the baby taps her greeting in Morse code. 

 

"Do you remember," he would say, "what we were doing a year  
ago tonight?" "A year ago tonight?" She would pause,  
pretending to think. "Can't say that I do." "Let me," he  
would say, stopping to kiss her softly on the lips,  
"refresh your memory."

She spends her evenings swathed in Mulder's clothes,  
flannel pajamas far too long and worn jerseys far too wide  
despite the new bulge of her belly. A year ago she woke to  
Mulder's erection pressed against her backside and couldn't  
resist the most obvious cliche. "You know, Mulder, it's  
really not safe to sleep with your gun." 

"Well, Scully." His hand slid from hip to breast. "You  
know of a safer place?" 

"We'll see about that, Mulder, we'll see."

It was months of tender kisses in motel room doorways and  
trading notes on iced tea labels before she found herself  
in Mulder's bed again, drawn to his half-clothed body in  
the moonlight when she woke with crease marks on her face,  
that old blanket draped across her shoulders. She was  
touched and frustrated all at once that he'd left her  
there, and when she saw him she knew she was on the right  
path. She left her jacket on the foot of his bed and lay  
down next to him, still in her green sweater and slim black  
skirt.

"Take off your clothes," Mulder said, voice gravelly with  
sleep and husky with desire.

The memory is fresh enough that her cheeks flush, and she  
feels herself growing wet. If he were here, he'd have her  
clothes off by now, his hand between her thighs. With each  
pound she gains, her libido seems to swell.

"Take off your clothes," Mulder said, and she did, sliding  
into bed beside him in nothing but black lycra underwear.  
She'd waited seven years for him to undo the clasp of her  
bra. She admits that readily now, that she'd fallen for  
him that night in her red robe. She can still feel his  
hand on her back, that spot he touched again and again  
through her clothes.

* * *

It's one of those days that every song on the radio reminds  
her of him. "I'm blue," Scully half sings to herself,  
"daba dee daba die," remembering how all of a sudden last  
spring Mulder had taken to listening to music in the  
office, silly pop tunes and eighties mixes from the guys.  
Days she'd walk into the office and he'd be swaying his  
hips to jazz or techno and everything in between, saying,  
"Dance with me, Scully." And one afternoon when she came  
back with lunch, they danced, really danced, because their  
report was done and it was a glorious spring day and she  
was wearing, just for him, that pale lavender suit.

"Want me to change the station?" Doggett asks, and Scully  
knows she must seem ridiculous, hormone-crazed, her eyes  
brimming with tears. Do not, she tells herself, let him  
see you cry. 

"No, leave it."

* * *

A year ago a genie granted Mulder three wishes. A year ago  
they watched "Caddyshack" and "Plan Nine from Outer Space."  
A year ago they ate Ethiopian food and conceived a baby on  
his couch.

No, not a year, just six months. It feels like a lifetime,  
though, and for one tiny person, it is. She looks again at  
the textbook diagram, notes the placement of the placenta,  
the size of the head in proportion to the body. In six  
months, it will be a year since the little girl was  
conceived, not the result of a frozen vial of Mulder's  
sperm but semen fresh from his body into hers. The math is  
making her ill.

She thinks about the night the baby was conceived. No, she  
tells herself, conceptualized, the way she'd asked him,  
without pretense or preamble, to father her child. She'd  
gone straight from Parenti's office to Mulder's apartment,  
heart pounding with the best kind of adrenaline rush.  
Fists clenched in her pocket during the long walk down his  
hallway, she didn't know whether to kiss him for being  
sentimental enough to keep the eggs in his freezer or smack  
him for being cowardly enough not to tell her. 

The words were out of her mouth before he had time to shut  
the door. "I consulted a specialist. He said he can get  
me pregnant. I know it's crazy and I know the timing is  
awful, but after everything that's happened. . . ." She  
didn't finish, but they both knew she meant the gunshot  
wound and the fiery deaths of the Syndicate and delivering  
that baby during a Florida storm. "I just want to try."  
She paused for a beat, just long enough to catch her  
breath. "Will you help me, Mulder?"

"Will I help you? Will I help you what, Scully? Give you  
one half of the necessary genetic material? Play Uncle  
Mulder to the Uber-Scully? We've already tried the  
cohabitation thing and look how well that worked out." He  
gave her a loopy smile and tried to soften the blow. "I  
don't know, Scully. I'm flattered. And part of me thinks  
I owe you that much and more. That day at the Gunmen's?  
You were right; your investment couldn't have been more  
personal." 

Melissa and Emily, her mind supplied, a price etched in the  
names of girls. 

"But another part of me," he began, then walked to the  
couch and sat down. "Another part of me knows that giving  
you a baby couldn't possibly replace what you've lost. And  
what kind of world would we be bringing this kid into?" 

She sat beside him and let him tuck her head beneath his  
chin. She remembers everything about that night, the feel  
of Mulder's blue sweater against her cheek, the smell of  
his aftershave and the unexpected offer of chamomile tea,  
Chet Baker on the stereo singing "It always happens to me."

* * *

They tried IVF for two cycles. After the first didn't  
take, Mulder said he'd do anything, look everywhere.  
They'd go back to San Diego, they'd track Dr. Calderon,  
they'd bring their children home. After the second  
attempt, he put her faith before his investigative work and  
said, like a character from the soap opera that their lives  
were quickly becoming, "Never give up on a miracle."

Then Africa happened and Mulder's brain surgery. She  
wasn't surprised when neither of them mentioned the idea  
again.

* * *

She remembers making a timeline in her junior high history  
class, all colored pencil and girlish handwriting. She  
told Mulder once that time was the universal invariant but  
she knows now that time isn't linear but circular. Perhaps  
in ten years she'll tell her daughter, I met your father  
eight years before you were born. It was March 1993. I  
was wearing a red bathrobe when I fell in love and a white  
one when I realized what he meant to me. Silly, she  
thinks, chronicling time with bathrobes. Bathrobes or pop  
tunes or cases, what's the difference?

Five months ago her partner kissed her good morning and  
refused to kiss her goodbye, standing in the hallway  
outside their office. Five months ago a doctor showed her  
the results of a blood test. Five months ago Mulder went  
missing. 

Another mark on the timeline.

Just a day before she'd set up an appointment to see her  
doctor, still dizzy, inexplicably nauseous. How could she  
have been so stupid? What kind of woman having regularly  
scheduled nights of unprotected sex doesn't conclude she's  
pregnant when her period is late and the thought of food  
makes her want to throw up? If she'd even thought--no, if  
only she let herself believe--for a single moment, Mulder  
might be with her now, drawing circles on her belly and  
telling their unborn child a bedtime story. But she didn't  
and here she is, making timelines and wearing her partner's  
clothes. Math geek, he said, a year ago, and then he  
kissed her.

* * *

For two months she's known they are having a girl. After  
she collapsed in Montana, after she started cramping and  
Skinner accompanied her, again, to the emergency room, she  
decided she'd had enough surprises to last a lifetime.  
Skinner held her hand while the technician spread gel  
across her belly. When the sound of fetal heart tones  
filled the room, she said, "I hope she has her father's  
heart."

"I'm so sorry, Scully. This shouldn't have happened."

No, it shouldn't have happened, but it did, and in the two  
months since Mulder's funeral she's tried to think about  
the future, the red circle in May on her calendar. Still,  
she finds herself thinking of him often, organizing mental  
files so she'll be able to find them when their daughter  
asks. The baby isn't an alien or a violation but a girl, a  
human girl, a girl created from her and Mulder alone. She  
needs a crib, not a filing cabinet or a black leather  
couch, and Scully decides to go shopping tomorrow. When  
the time is right, she'll ask Skinner to paint stars on the  
ceiling. 

The baby is restless, turning like her father in the middle  
of the night. There's no question of where his soul  
resides.


End file.
